Provisional safeguards may take the form of a surtax that applies to all subject imports or a surtax that only applies to subject imports that exceed a specified quantity threshold (i.e., tariff-rate quota). As an example, provisional safeguards imposed
by the European Union on July 19, 2018, took the form of product-specific tariff-rate quotas whereby a 25 per cent surtax is only applied once imports exceed 100 per cent of the average of volume of imports between 2015 and 2017.

Products being considered for provisional safeguards are used in a variety of applications, the most common of which include: